Guest Posts Archives - Page 5 of 6 - McLellan Marketing Group

How to market to the anti-consumer (Gaurav Mishra)

September 5, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Gaurav Mishra. Again. Enjoy!

I was the typical corporate fast-tracker until I realized last year that I was split into two halves. As an individual, I was tired of being targeted by commercial messages from the brands-media-retail triumvirate. As a marketer, I loved the art and science of marketing, adored brands, and was hardwired into the idea of capitalist free markets driven by consumerism.

So, when I observed people wanting to spend less, swap instead of spend, go local, go organic, stop buying things, or generally say no to brands, one part of me (me-as-a-consumer) knew exactly what they are talking about, but the other part of me (me-as-a-marketer) wondered what will happen to our economies when more people go "off consumption" because they are tired of consuming, tired of things.

My endeavor to reconcile these two parts of me has led me to my year-long off consumption experiment, an attempt to understand why we choose to consume or not, based on which I’m writing a book called ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption‘

The end of consumption (as we know it) is not only every marketer’s worst nightmare; it is also a nightmare that is about to become a reality. Across the world, and especially in Europe and North America, a set of seven interrelated and increasingly important trends are changing the very nature of consumption:

From multi-tasking to down-shifting.
From fitting in or standing out to being authentic.
From owning to experiencing.
From buying to sharing or exchanging.
From having to giving.
From conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption.
From short-term to sustainable.

If you live in consumption-crazed India, these trends might seem somewhat… well… foreign to you. However, there is a small subculture of Indians — people in their late twenties or early thirties who have seen, done and bought it all – who are beginning to say "no" to buying things.

An increasing number of consumers are rejecting their roles as consumers and refusing to define themselves by the things they buy. Instead, they are choosing to define their identities from the experiences they have, the relationships they build, and the meaning they create by expressing themselves creatively.

If you are a marketer, you can react to these trends in two ways. You can ignore them until they hit you, or you can immerse yourself in them, like I have chosen to.

After studying these trends for almost six months, I see that there is a way for brands to stay relevant, even if the seven social trends I talked about move closer to the mainstream.

Simplicity, authenticity and community are the three themes that run through the seven social trends that are changing consumption. Brands that help us clear the clutter in our lives, or enable us to have authentic experiences, or assist us in forming and connecting with communities will become the most important necessities, the only things we can’t do without.

1. People Want Community: Social media has changed how we express ourselves creatively, but more importantly, it has changed how we organize ourselves into communities. The rising ubiquity of social media has not surprisingly coincided with the coming of age of the Millennial and their need to return to the community.

Social media has not only facilitated the formation of virtual communities separated in time and space, it has enabled us to have conversations with each other about the brands we buy and use, which means that the brands that listen to these conversations, participate in them, or provide a platform for them, will emerge as winners.

At the broader level, our need to return to the community means that brands that enable communal experiences will be favored while brands that try to hijack or disrupt communities will see a backlash against them.

2. People Want Authenticity: A related trend is that we want real and authentic experiences, instead of packaged formulaic one. So, when we travel, we are not satisfied with the usual photo-opportunities; instead, we want to participate in adventure sports, or immerse ourselves in local culture, or go off the beaten track and explore nature.

When we eat out, we are not satisfied with the fast food version of a foreign cuisine; instead, we want to taste the authentic cuisine in its authentic ambiance, which means that nothing beats home cooked food eaten at home. When it comes to music, we are not satisfied with listening to the latest hits on TV; instead we want to watch our favorite local band perform live, or even better, pick up a guitar and jam with them at a house party.

Brands are great at reducing experiences into formulas and packaging them for mass consumption. Brands that resist the urge to reduce experiences and instead try to enhance them will build a cult following for themselves.

3. People Want Simplicity: Even as we crave for authentic, communal experiences, we realize that it is time, and not money, that stops us from having these experiences. We feel overwhelmed by the bombardment of messages from brands, media and retail and learn to filter them out.

We feel overburdened with the demands of the million things we own and decide that we don’t really need them. We feel overstretched with our 70 hour workweeks and realize that there is a trade off between work and leisure and individuals or even societies can choose to work less and have better quality of life instead of more money.

France, with its 35 hour work-week, is a great example of a society that has made this trade off. This trade off means different things for different people, but it often involves down-shifting, working for ourselves, or blurring the boundaries between work and play.

Brand that help us reduce clutter and free up time will become the most important necessities, the only things we can’t do without.

You can call us the ‘new rich’ (like Tim Ferris does), or the ‘creative class’ (like Richard Florida does), or the ‘cultural consumer‘ (like Patricia Martin does) – the bottom-line is that we are part of an increasingly important subculture that is different from the mainstream masses in important ways. Brand still have a place in our subculture, but only if they allow us to interpret them or even change them, instead of trying to dictate our desires or telling us what we need or want.

Gaurav Mishra is on a sabbatical from the Tata Group to do research on social media in BRIC countries as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at Georgetown University. He blogs at Gauravonomics Blog.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

flickr photo courtesy of SqueakyMarmot

The most important part of the branding mix is you (Efrain Mendicuti)

August 22, 2008

Yesterday, as I was delivering a marketing workshop for a very important company in the Entertainment industry worldwide, their CMO asked a great and tough to answer question: "Aside from all you are showing us today, I’d like you to share with the whole team one critical advise that should help us improve the way we do our marketing."

Now, how exactly does anyone answer a question like this to a company with the likes of Disney, McDonalds, Coke or any other globally recognized brand in the world?

I’ve been providing marketing communication services for the last 13+ years and am well used to doing tough, even challenging, sometimes risky recommendations to my clients, specially regarding their incorporation to the interactive marketing discipline.

But to be absolutely honest I had never been asked such a direct question. And yes I needed to answer it!

So here’s what I said to them:

The one thing I recommend the members of the marketing team at any big company to do, to improve they way the do their marketing efforts is: do not forget that you too , as executives, are a very important representative of your brand.

Never lose sight that, no matter how big your budget is, how great your market share is or how impressive your ToM is, if you as a professional don’t act in accordance to the values of your brand and with the same care, you’ll end up creating a wrong perception of your brand.

If your brand’s promise is to create magical moments for people but yet you give everybody a hard time, you will not be creating magic. If your company promises to always provide relevant content to its users, but yet you don’t pay attention to your client’s needs, your customers will end up not believing in you. If your loyalty program promises to provide a great experience through and around your brand, but yet you treat everybody with disdain, people will end up not caring about your brand.

So lose the arrogance and act with humbleness. Share the passion you feel for your brand with everybody and give them a great experience. Treat every person (yes your vendors and internal clients too) like the biggest of your clients. Leave everybody you talk to each day feeling like you (therefore the brand you represent too) have made their day and leave them saying "no wonder they are (name of your brand here)!"

And never forget that just like "we are what we eat", our brand is what we feed it to be.

Efrain Mendicuti is an Interactive Marketing Communications professional, who’s taken his experience and knowledge into the field of training and talent development by collaborating with different organizations as trainer, speaker and consultant to companies like GCI Group, The Walt Disney Co., Idea Visual and some of the major adverting groups in Mexico, where he lives with his wife and baby daughter. He is also Head of Agency Relations at Google Mexico. Visit his blog The Daily Stuff and the Not So.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Always tell a good story (Nettie Hartsock)

August 15, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares her insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Nettie Hartsock. Again. Enjoy!

Growing up in the South inspires good stories. Growing up and well into adulthood, my Great-Aunt Florence would make all the cousins sit around in a circle and tell our best stories. I still remember the best of those stories and often tell them to clients or friends to give them an understanding of my life.

And in business, just like in any other arena, people are most drawn to good stories and engaging storytellers. We’re always looking for the next great story.

In my work online for over 14 years and counting I’ve truly lived a virtual life of networking and telling stories. By being conversant, engaging, authentic and open to discussing all the parts that make up "the power of Nettie" I’ve been able to win clients, meet astounding peer gurus and learn so much from others online who are so willing to share their stories.

While it’s important to network, network, network, one of the real keys in terms of successful networking is to be able to share your stories. You’ll empower those meaningful interactions of storytelling that occur completely unexpectedly over a beer, a virtual coffee or short phone conversation simply because you were willing to be more conversant and less marketing-speech focused.

I believe that at the end of the day we all want to feel connected, valued and inspired by other people both offline and online.

We all want to feel a part of a larger community and that includes your customers and partners. If you’re struggling to tell an engaging story about your company, your product or your book then now might be a good time to really get to the essence of your story.

Here are some tips/questions to help you get your story focus started:

What’s the aha moment you’ve had about the company or product that you always feel compelled to share?
What’s the best metaphor for your company? Metaphors are valuable because they can present your company in a new way for folks who might not otherwise understand exactly what it is your company does.
Success stories (case studies) are always fantastic ways to give "success snapshots" about your company and how you’ve succeeded for your customers.
Journalists like stories that are short, sweet and engaging. Journalists are always under tight deadlines, and if you can’t pitch your story in two minutes or less then you need to work on getting your pitch in order.
Look at your competitor’s stories and see how you can improve your story
Make sure your story is congruent and consistent with the most notable things you want to highlight about your business

My story from my childhood is how my Gramps (a Major General in the Air Force) taught us all to swim by piling us up on his belly and swimming the backstroke out the ocean’s sandbar. Once there he said, "Now you swim back," and you’ve never seen so many little cousins swimming hard toward a white belly going the opposite way in your life! And we all learned how to swim.

And always remember what Groucho Marx said, "If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again."

Nettie Hartsock is a recovering technology journalist and now serves as a digital strategist helping artists, musicians, authors and companies focus on creating, conveying and connecting their message to the world. Check out her blog.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Image courtesy of San Diego State’s Educational Technology Class 470

Steve Carell on Bad Advertising (Josh Klein)

August 8, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another marketing thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Josh Klein. Again. Enjoy!

In the movie, Anchorman, there’s a moment when the character played by funny man Steve Carell becomes so overwhelmed by the volume of the conversation – and the lack of attention being paid to him – that in a desperate plea to have his voice heard above the din, he shouts, "LOUD NOISES!"

Steve knows about bad advertising. We all do.

And yet so much advertising is just companies shouting loud noises. We’re all susceptible, as business marketers or just people who want to be heard, to be a part of this system.

When everyone else is talking loudly in the cafeteria, you’re tempted to raise your voice so people can hear you. You get a little louder, then someone else does, and soon the whole room is louder. So you get a little louder, so someone else does, and so on.

It’s not that you wanted to be loud, but you couldn’t help it. It’s a "collective action problem", a tragedy of the commons. We’d all prefer everyone being quiet to everyone being loud (less noise in our lives and less spend on ad dollars), but as long as everyone else is quiet, we cheat a little and raise our volume. And so does everyone else.

It’s a vicious cycle. As it continues, your message has less impact (people ignore it) but you still get louder (costs more money).

How many of you own a Tivo? The great thing about Tivo is it lets us skip commercials. The point of watching television is to enjoy the show. In my case: Dexter or Mad Men (serial killers and advertisers, oh my).

The commercials interrupt us, and that pisses us off.

Commercials are usually noise, so we ignore them or skip them. Some TV commercials are really loud, like during the Superbowl, so we watch those, but only out of a morbid curiosity about their inappropriateness.

We live in a world where thousands of marketing messages hit us at every turn. We’ve gotten really good at ignoring it, just like when we stand in that crowded cafeteria where everyone else is having a conversation. We just tune it out.

Americans watch 100 million hours of TV commercials a weekend, says Clay Shirky. (watch him speak at Web 2.0 Expo) How many do we bother paying attention to?

But there are some commercials we rewind the Tivo to watch, like the Sony Bravia spot (filmed on the street of my old office) or the early Halo 3 teaser.

Not because they’re loud, but because they’re not noise.

You don’t have to play the noise game. Drop the whole paradigm, it’s dead. You want to be in the signal game.

The signal cuts through the noise no matter how loud the noise gets, because the signal is what we’re waiting for. TV shows are the signal. In-depth product reviews are the signal. A call to the customer from the CEO asking how to improve service is the signal.

Amazon has some really good signal advertising. You know that whole recommendation engine? Surprise, surprise – that’s an advertising platform.

"Customers who bought this item also bought…" advertisement. "71% of customers who viewed this item eventually bought…" advertisement. "Tags customers associated with this product…" advertisement.

But wait, aren’t those features? Isn’t that useful? Isn’t that what people want to know about?

Yes. Why aren’t your ads?

I don’t pretend it’s easy to make signal advertising. It requires thinking less about yourself and more about your customer. The mindset has to be "what does my customer want?" instead of "how can I make my customer want what I have?"

And you can go too far. Ads made purely to entertain with no connection to the brand don’t do you much good. It has to be a careful balance.

Have you seen some great signal advertising? Please let us know in the comments.

Josh Klein hates buzzwords, but his factory label reads "fully buzzword compliant." As a digital marketing strategist based out of New York, he ponders how to make the web a better place for businesses, individuals, and civilization. You can read his Tuesday-morning musings for free at Josh Klein Web Strategy.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Informal or Formal – Which Writing Style Fits Your Web Site? (Brad Shorr)

August 1, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post from yet another interesting thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Brad Shorr. Enjoy!

The business world has become dramatically less formal, hasn’t it? Not so long ago, casual days were a novelty; today, they’re the norm. The interactive Web is taking informality to unprecedented levels in terms of communication. Blogs, along with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, are conversations rather than dissertations, a haphazard exchange of ideas rather than a systematic presentation of facts.

Companies wonder whether their formal Web content has become stale, out of step with the times. Answers will vary according to circumstances, but here are a few things to consider as you evaluate what style of writing to employ on your Web site.

Consider customer expectations. All other things being equal, an informal style has the broadest appeal among business readers. However, things are not always equal. If you operate a funeral home, manage investments, or administer safety audits, customers won’t take you seriously if your Web site is loose, chatty, or irreverent. Be judicious – don’t jump on the conversational bandwagon unless your target audience is already on board.

Consider the information. Sometimes the best copywriting solution is a mixture. For Customer Care pages, a conversational style works wonders because it personalizes your organization. But product description pages often lend themselves to a straightforward, "just the facts" treatment. What you probably don’t want to do is mix styles within a given section of Web content, and you certainly don’t want to mix styles within a single page.

Consider your core values. Don’t try to be something you’re not. If your business style is all about maintaining formal, professional relationships – more power to you. But if that’s the case, stay formal. Your Web site should reflect your values, not contradict them. On the flip side, if you believe humor makes the world go ’round, injecting a little of it into your message may be the best thing you can do for your brand, regardless of your field.

Be honest – you can’t wrong

Because transparency – being honest and genuine – is so important, weigh core values heavily when deciding how your Web content should be written. Sometimes people equate transparency with informality, but that’s not the case. Look at the difference in style in the About Us pages of two highly successful steel companies, Nucor and U.S. Steel.

"It’s not hard to understand why safety always receives so much attention with us. For one thing, it’s smart business. Groups with great safety records also tend to perform equally well when it comes to quality, costs, timeliness, and productivity. But more importantly, when your company’s success is built on treating workers well, that all starts with creating the right focus on safety." (Nucor)

"Every day, more than 49,000 U. S. Steel employees around the world dedicate themselves to putting our five core values into action. Safety is first – it’s our company’s top priority. Our other core values are diversity and inclusion; environmental stewardship; focus on cost, quality and customer; and results and accountability. Focusing on these values guides our highly skilled workforce toward realizing our Vision: Making Steel. World Competitive. Building Value." (U.S. Steel)

Which company appeals to you? The messages are similar, but Nucor’s approach makes me feel as though I’m sitting in a bar talking to one of their executives, whereas U.S. Steel’s makes me feel like I’m attending a sales presentation. Though people may respond to the messages differently, both are effective because each reflects the values of the company.

So … where do you stand – formal or informal? How well does your Web site reflect your way of doing business?

Brad Shorr lives in the Chicago area and is president of Word Sell, Inc. He helps organizations strengthen their online presence, engage in social media marketing, create and manage business blogs, and write compelling Web content. He does not enjoy writing about himself in the third person because it is too formal.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Finding at risk customers – deux (Dr. Mark Klein)

July 25, 2008

Drew’s Note: This week’s guest blogger had so much to say, we decided to break it up into two parts. So without further delay…Dr. Mark Klein. Again. Enjoy!

Using At-Risk scores

Now that we have an At-Risk score for each customer, we need a reasonable way to use it. Every customer is at risk to some degree. How do we find the threshold above which we need to take action?

One approach is based on the existing rate of defection, the [yearly] percent of customers who go inactive by not making a purchase within the time that defines an active customer.

We classify a customer as At-Risk if they have a probability of defection that is equal to or greater than the overall population defection rate. For example, let’s assume that 15% of the total customer population defects each year. Then we say a customer is At-Risk if they have a probability greater than15% of defection from the logistic regression model. This is a simple, pragmatic, and effective way to set the threshold.

It may be useful to consider a combination of At-Risk score and a customer’s lifetime value when deciding which customers warrant an aggressive win-back campaign. Working to retain a customer with low lifetime value (future revenue potential) and high probability of defection is not the best use of resources. Instead, concentrate on customers with higher lifetime values and more tractable At-Risk scores.

Measuring the accuracy of At-Risk predictions

It is important to regularly assess the accuracy of the predictions, and to update the analysis when the predictions have shown a significant decrease in accuracy. How fast conditions change and how much accuracy the model loses is a function of the nature of the business and the rate of change of the indicator variables, but there are many situations where a model loses its accuracy within a few months. Model accuracy needs to be spot-checked on a quarterly basis at a minimum, and if it is financially viable, monthly assessments are recommended.

The best way to measure model accuracy is with a correlation coefficient that distinguishes between true positives, true negatives, false positives, and false negatives. A false negative, for example, is a customer for whom the model predicted defection but the customer in fact made a purchase. The true negatives are the customers of interest: the model predicts defection and indeed the customer did defect. We regularly see results where true negatives are accurately identified 80% of the time.

But of course to make these measurements, a business must be willing to not reach out to at least some at-risk customers in order to measure the accuracy of the model. It’s hard for many companies to resist touching some of these potential defectors just to measure model accuracy. The best approach is to use an automated system to regularly identify at-risk customers, with less frequent but still periodic checks using control groups.

Given the worth of a customer and the high cost of acquiring new ones, finding at-risk customers is a mission-critical task. This brief overview is just an outline of the process; to learn more, see the author’s free eBook, Field Guide to Mathematical Marketing.

Feel like you jumped into the middle of the conversation? Maybe you missed part one of this post.

Dr. Mark Klein is is CEO of Loyalty Builders LLC, the developers of Longbow, a web-based direct marketing system that predicts the future buying behavior of existing customers. He blogs frequently on Mathematical Marketing and recently published his first novel.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Finding at risk customers (Dr. Mark Klein)

July 25, 2008

A defector is a customer who is no longer buying from you. ‘No longer’ is a relative term; most companies say that a customer is no longer a customer when some well (or in some cases, not so well) defined period of time has elapsed since their last purchase.

Since customers are the most valuable asset of a business, it is extremely important to build early warning systems to spot potential defectors before they walk away — it is much easier to retain a potential defector than it is to reactivate them once they’ve left.

This process is called At-Risk Assessment, and mathematical marketing makes it possible.

An At-Risk analysis should deliver two related numbers for each customer: the probability of defection and the At-Risk percentile rank. The latter number comes from ranking all the customers according to their probability of defection. Customers with a higher risk ranking are more likely to defect than customers with a lower risk ranking. Knowing these numbers, a company can build a strong program to prevent defection.

How to calculate an at-risk score

What doesn’t work too well is just looking at declines in a customer’s purchasing patterns. These may be leading indicators of defection, but by the time they are recognized, it may be too late for an offer with the needed incentives to retain a valued customer. Other methods are needed to spot the potential defector earlier, which is why assuming that the customers at risk are those on the lower end of the loyalty score spectrum is a flawed approach.

The best approach is:

Identify a set of variables or customer characteristics that may be leading indicators of defection.
Analyze these variables using a technique known as Logistic Regression, which lets us determine which of these variables are actually significant indicators of defection.
Use what we’ve learned to actually assign a probability of defection to each active customer.

Logistic Regression tells us how much of the probability is explained by each of the predictor variables, and we can rank them accordingly. This makes the probability more actionable since we have some guidance as to what we need to offer to each customer.

The chart below shows the distribution of At-Risk scores for a real company, along with the revenue from each customer. Each dot is an identifiable customer. Customers to the right have a higher risk of defection than those to the left. The red dots represent high value customers with a higher risk of defection. (Click on chart for full-sized view)

Done properly, a Logistic Regression analysis can tell us:

How accurately the model is assigning customers based on the relevant factors
Which customers exhibit traits of an active customer, yet have become inactive; they were predicted to respond to our campaigns but did not, and may be worth another touch
Which customers are active, but exhibit all the traits of a defecting customer, the truly At-Risk customer

Stay tuned for part two of this guest post…how to use At Risk scores.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Guinness is good for you (Mark Nagurski)

July 18, 2008

What Guinness can teach us about creating a brand.

At the risk of death-by-cliché, as an Irishman I enjoy the odd tipple from time to time at my local pub, and often my libation of choice is one of Ireland’s greatest inventions – Guinness.

As a brand, Guinness punches well above its weight. The iconic black and white pint, the distinctive taste and the classic advertising are as much a part of ‘brand Ireland’ as shamrocks, leprechauns and Riverdance.

This is despite the sour-faced contortions regularly seen as the first drops of the bitter malt hit an uninitiated palate. In other words, some people don’t like it much at all.

So what, considering the love it or loathe it taste, makes the Guinness brand one of the world’s best loved – and what can we learn from it?

1. Guinness is visually distinctive. There are very few products as instantly recognisable as a pint of Guinness – it’s the ‘black stuff’ after all. Guinness use this visual identity in every aspect of their instantly recognisable marketing efforts. (Put your birthday in to prove you’re legal to view the page and it will take you there.) Are your brand and communications as visually distinctive?

2. Guinness is unmistakable. Guinness is not easily compared to any other brand of beer. Guinness is different. Which, of course, is good news for Guinness as people aren’t passionate about sameness. People are passionate about products and services that are distinctive. How easily could yours be compared with the competition?

3. Guinness is part of a larger community and brand – brand Ireland. Walk into any souvenir shop in Ireland and you’ll see as many black and white Guinness t-shirts, mugs and caps as green and white ‘Ireland’ ones. Association with Ireland allows Guinness to piggyback on the positive brand equity of an entire nation and engenders more than a few feelings of ownership in the brand amongst us natives – it’s our brand. Could you do the same with your town, city or state? What about being associated with an event, time of year or activity?

4. Guinness has a great back-story, folklore and heritage. Where you’ve come from (and how you’ve come from it) helps to tell the story of who you are. In Guinness’ case it’s a story stretching from Arthur Guinness in the 18th century, via the ‘Guinness is Good for You’ advertisements of the twenties and thirties, and onto the present day.

Weave in a bit of blarney, a few red herrings (not literally), a good dose of humour plus the occasional old wives’ tale and you have the Guinness story, and brand, in one. And they knowingly play up to it.

Of course, your brand may not be 250 years in the making; but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a story worth talking about.

5. Guinness plays to authenticity and quality. So long as they’re cold, most beers are much the same in most bars. Not so Guinness. Guinness has turned their brewing process into a half science, half leprechaun dust, seasoned and serious craft. They also spend €50 million a year visiting over 11,000 licensed premises to test the quality of the product and instruct the nation’s barmen and women in the fine art of the perfect pour (it takes 119.5 seconds by the way).

The detail and carefully honed impression of craftsmanship encourages a ‘connoisseur’ mentality amongst fans: the perfect glass, the prefect colour, the perfect head, the perfect pint. And, as anyone will tell you, there’s nothing like a pint of Guinness in a real Irish bar (in Ireland of course – Guinness doesn’t like to travel).

More than anything, Guinness has become an experience where the ritual of serving, the story and the feel of the brand are as important as the beer itself. In fact, once initiated you’ll no doubt recognise a gorgeous pint as if it were your first born child, will occasionally speak at length on the importance of the 45-degree pouring angle and will certainly look scornfully at any ill-trained barman who neglects the two-step pouring process.

But where, exactly, will you find that perfect pint of Guinness?

I’ll let you know when I’ve finished looking.

Mark Nagurski is Guinness-drinker, marketer, blogger and freelance writer – the order of which depends largely on the day of the week. Based in Ireland, he is passionate about small business and has worked in the trenches as a marketing consultant and sales manager for over a decade. You’ll find Mark’s daily marketing related rantings, tips and advice at www.reallypractical.com

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

The case for frequency (Jay Ehret)

July 11, 2008

It was the spring 1988, in my early days as a radio advertising sales representative. "Account Executive" is what they called me. I sat across the table from the owner of a small, local sandwich shop in Waco, Texas, and took out a piece of paper.

"The elements of a successful advertising campaign," I began "are message, reach, and frequency." As I listed each element, I would draw a circle on the paper, and label it. Then I put plus signs between the circles, and capped it off with an equals sign pointing to "success."

What a simple time it was in the days of old media. Can you imagine that pitch in today’s new media? It wouldn’t work. Message, reach and frequency have been replaced by volume, spam, and hyperbole.

In today’s internet-driven marketing, the goal seems to be to make the most boastful claim in a highly forceful manner and then force feed it to as many email addresses and internet browsers as possible. So does that mean the rules of old media no longer apply?

To answer that question, we need to look at the brain. Because I’m not a neuroscientist, I’ll let John Medina look at the brain instead. Plus he’s already done the dirty work with a book called Brain Rules. You can find much of the book’s basic information on Medina’s nifty Brain Rules website.

What You Remember
You don’t remember things accurately. That’s not a knock on you. Humans don’t remember things accurately. It’s just the way the brain works. In fact, it’s highly likely that my introduction story didn’t actually happen the way I remember it. The sandwich store owner, who is still a friend today, probably remembers that meeting differently or not at all.

The problem is that you forget most of what you learn within hours of contact. Why? Scientists don’t really know, it’s just the way the brain works. The typical human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. Rarely are memories fixed at the moment of learning, even if you engage in loud exaggeration.

But Medina also points out that while we forget a great deal within the first hour of our exposure, "this loss could be lessened by deliberate repetitions." Further, Medina explains that "repeated exposure to information in specifically timed intervals provides the most powerful way to fix memory into the brain."

Marketers struggle to get consumers to remember their message in an over-marketed world. Yet we consistently ignore one of the most potent ingredients of memory: frequency! Creativity and innovation are celebrated in ad agencies and books, but frequency rarely is. Please introduce me to your Frequency Director or Frequency Evangelist.

Brain Rules
Every marketer should read chapters 5 and 6 of Brain Rules by John Medina. It may be the most important 51 pages you ever read. Marketers have created a lot of their own rules in this age of new marketing. But we shouldn’t forget the rules of the brain.

Your differentiating message, your advertising campaign, your brand promise requires a lot of repetition before it can be retrieved. It turns out that the brain has made the strongest case yet for frequency.

Jay Ehret is founder and chief steward of The Marketing Spot, a small business marketing coaching and consulting firm in Waco, Texas. He blogs at The Marketing Spot and is a contributor to the upcoming book Age of Conversation: Why Don’t They Get It.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Perfect is the enemy of good (Jay Heyman)

June 27, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post from yet another interesting thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. Without further ado, meet Jay Heyman. Enjoy!

Good times and bum times, the one thing we all need to do to is find a way to stand out from our competition. You know, the 740 other people you can uncover in the Yellow Pages or with a Google search that do exactly what you do.

Well, don’t tell your competition, but I am suggesting to you that the most important part of your marketing is the idea.

Yes, I know that the creative portion is just part of the total marketing mix. You have all the other traditional elements of marketing to consider, such as pricing, research, media selection and channels of distribution.

Pick the wrong price point? Painful!

Misinterpret your research? Ouch!

But if you fail to make your marketing conspicuous, get it wrong or get it bland — you will suffer the death of a thousand silent cash registers. However if you use the power of a good idea to get attention, you will build market share, get publicity, appear larger than you really are and make your competition nervous…while actually having fun.

A GOOD IDEA

A good idea sounds fresh and new and presents itself in an arresting manner. It will slow down the audience, grab attention, and invite further inspection of your message. An unexpected splash of color, the precise word in a headline, a stopper of an illustration, a twist on your usual message, a new target, a different execution – anything can help create a good idea. The Coke spot with two Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons trying to capture the bottle, and Charlie Brown emerging the surprise winner is one very random example of a good idea. But good ideas don’t rely on big budgets. A local landscaping company that uses the name, "Holly, Wood and Vine" is a good idea.

GO FOR THE GOOD

The good news is that you don’t need to find a "great" marketing idea. And actually there are lots of reasons not to try to develop one. While you are waiting for the "world’s greatest " idea you will find yourself conscientiously discarding all the ideas you create, judging them as not being good enough, or a little trite, or not quite clever enough. You will never satisfy yourself sufficiently to actually use one of them.

Keep prodding, tweaking, and tampering with something good, trying to turn it into something perfect, and you will not just miss a lot of important deadlines. It is possible you might never get there at all, in effect turning a good idea into no idea.

Good ideas, with words and ideas that are fresh and unexpected will jump off the page, the TV set, the computer and do handsprings, whistle off-key, anything it takes to grab attention and shout, "Look at me. Look at me!"

And that’s close enough to perfect for anybody.

Jay H. Heyman is co-founder and creative director of Porte Advertising, a sixteen-year old ad agency in Manhattan. His latest book is All You Need Is A Good Idea! (How To Create Marketing Messages That Actually Get Results). It is available online, at your favorite bookstore, or through his blog, which he invites you to visit often, so he can test his stat counter.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

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